Commodification of women’s landscapes in post-renovation Vietnam: the case of Endless Field by Nguyễn Ngọc Tư from novella to film

In what manner has the commodification of artistic works of women unfolded in post-renovation Vietnam? How does this contribute to our understanding of the relationship between gender and landscape in a market-oriented socialist country? This article analyzes two versions of a fictional landscape, the field, as discursive constructions in relation to female characters in Nguyễn Ngọc Tư’s novella ‘Endless Field’ and Nguyễn Phan Quang Bình’s film ‘The Floating Lives.’ Drawing on feminist philosophy on women’s love, feminist semiotics, and critiques offered by Laura Mulvey regarding patriarchal cinema, the paper argues that the process of commodification of women’s landscapes from an artistic novella by a female writer to a commercial film by a male director is also a process of gendering/regendering landscape. By providing a means to elucidate this process in Vietnamese literature and cinema in the post-renovation era, the paper aims to clarify its contribution in producing, reproducing, questioning, and reinforcing gender stereotypes.